I excitedly read this recent tweet by Evan Perkoski of UConn, about a new article he co-authored that has been accepted in International Organization. Beyond being glad for a colleague's success, I was excited by the substance of the publication. They produced a new...
ess than a year after the appearance of "The False Promise of International Institutions," the journal International Security published replies from Robert Keohane and Lisa...
I'm working on a new project about the use of religion in power politics (part of which I'll be presenting "at" APSA this week). I'm finding good evidence, but the framing is tricky. Religion as a...
Political scientists often say that 'no one reads books anymore.' I'd add that 'almost no one reads book reviews.' This is a shame. Although most book reviews are paint-by-numbers affairs, some...
SAGE has temporarily un-gated Colin Wight's "Incommensurability and Cross-Paradigm Communication in International Relations Theory: 'What's the Frequency Kenneth?'" Millennium - Journal of International Studies 1996, 25: 291 (PDF). Get it while its hot! Thanks to, and via, David Mainwaring.Â
[warning: this post and the piece attached to is is only of interest to a handful of academics]The April 2011 issue of International Organization included a very interesting review essay by Orfeo Fioretos entitled "Historical Institutionalism in International Relations." The thrust of Fioretos' argument, developed through a discussion of books ranging from John Ikenberry's After Victory to Abe Newman's Protectors of Privacy, is that international-relations scholarship would benefit from an historical-institutionalist turn. Although I found myself in agreement with the broad claims in the...
I had every intention this evening of writing a cynical commentary on all the hoopla surrounding Open Government, Open Data and the Great Transparency Revolution. But truth be told, I am brain-dead at the moment. Why? Because I spent the last two days down in Williambsurg, VA arbitrating codes for a Teaching, Research and International Politics (TRIP) project (co-led by myself and Jason Sharman) which analyzes what the field of IR looks like from the perspective of books. It is all meant as a complement to the innovative and hard work of Michael Tierney, Sue Peterson and the TRIP founders...
Lest you ask, I do understand the irony of me writing this particular post and risking being a one-hit blogger with the continuation of this series. But I haven't read a single Harry Potter book, so there is not much I can do. Enjoy!If you show up at the bar at a conference of international relations scholars, you will immediately stumble upon a conversation about paradigms or ‘isms.’ You will quickly learn that almost all of those same scholars hate the isms and believe the field would be better off without them. Yet this conversation is the same one that has occurred at every hotel bar at...
Just yesterday I cautioned a graduate student not to get on the wrong side of some powerful people for the sake of principle if he could not truly effect change. And yet here I sit typing this right now, about to begin a rant on David Lake's new ISQ article: "Why ''isms' are evil: Theory, Epistemology, and Academic Sects as Impediments to Understanding and Progress." Nexon started it. It is his fault.The piece is taken from David Lake's keynote address as ISA president and identifies five pathologies with dividing our field up the way we do, along 'ism' lines. We reify research traditions,...
So I have finally caught up on all the back episodes of Game of Thrones, so I know what the hell you are all talking about. I thought I'd take up Charli's challenge about the paradigm that Dead Ned represents because I think that it says something deeper (always deeper) about something missing in IR theory these days.Ned represents duty, honor and integrity as opposed to old school Machiavellianism (although I guess duty, honor and integrity are even more old school). But that is not liberalism, not at all. Those are all deeply conservative virtues. They are more romantic than rationalist,...
You have nothing to lose but those pesky questions about whether your methods actually prove anything....[Warning: what follows will likely only be of interest to practitioners and students of academic IR][UPDATED 2/4/07]Almost a year ago, but two months after the conversation had moved on, "IR scholar not philosopher"--who, to his/her credit included an amusing false email address (empiricist@empiricist.com)--posted an interesting comment in response to a post I wrote on realism and constructivism. I lack the energy to respond to it right now, but I thought it might provide some grist for...